Author: Midford, William
Biography:
MIDFORD, William (1788-1851: ancestry.com)
The surname is sometimes spelled Mitford but Midford is the preferred spelling in the collections of songs that included his work. Those collections are themselves complicated: though all that appeared in his lifetime were published by the radical bookseller John Marshall of Newcastle upon Tyne (fl 1800-1831), they were produced with a bewildering variety of titles and did not consistently include correct attributions. The first in which Midford’s songs were included appears to have been The Budget (1816); the most comprehensive is the 1827 edition of the Collection of Songs Comic, Satirical, and Descriptive in which Midford is named and plays a major role. He was born in Newcastle on 10 Apr. 1788 and baptised there on 13 Nov. 1791, but his parents Lancelot and Mary (Pickering) Mitford both died in 1791 and he was raised by an aunt and uncle at nearby Preston, North Shields. He became a shoemaker in Newcastle. On 27 Nov. 1809 he married Ann or Anne Irwin (1787-1848) at St. John’s, Newcastle. They had at least seven children. As his songs became popular, Midford gave up shoemaking and became a singing pub landlord, first at the North Pole and then at the more central Tailor’s Arms. He died at his home on Oyster-shell Lane, Newcastle, on 3 Mar. 1851, noted as “one of the last of the old school of local poets.” (ancestry.com 11 June 2023; findmypast.com 11 June 2023; Goodridge; J. H. Nodal et al., eds., A List of the Works . . . illustrative of the Various Dialects of English [1877], 94; Newcastle Courant 7 Mar. 1851) HJ